Central Ohio to add 22,000 jobs this year, economist predicts

Mark Williams, The Columbus Dispatch

Wednesday

Jan 6, 2016 at 12:01 AMJan 7, 2016 at 5:04 AM

For years, Columbus has been better at creating jobs than both the state and the U.S. That trend is expected to continue in 2016, according to Columbus economist Bill LaFayette, who on Wednesday released his annual jobs forecast for the metro area.

For years, Columbus has been better at creating jobs than both the state and the U.S.

That trend is expected to continue in 2016, according to Columbus economist Bill LaFayette, who on Wednesday released his annual jobs forecast for the metro area.

“This recovery has been very good for us. Since the beginning of 2010, central Ohio employment is up nearly 14 percent. The U.S. is up around 10 percent. We have 127,000 more jobs now than we did then. That is our best five-year streak in more than 15 years,” he said.

LaFayette is forecasting job growth of 2.2 percent for central Ohio this year, meaning that the region should gain about 22,000 jobs. With that kind of gain, the region should finish 2016 with 1.06 million jobs.

And last year’s estimate actually proved to be too cautious, he said. LaFayette’s current estimate is that job growth for the region was 2.3 percent in 2015.

By comparison, U.S. employment growth is expected to grow by 1.8 percent this year, compared with 2.1 percent in 2015. The number of jobs in Ohio was expected to grow by 1.4 percent last year.

Professional and business services, health care and construction are among the areas expected to have the best job gains this year; state government is expected to be the weakest with a loss of 200 jobs.

Health care alone should add about 6,100 jobs, professional and business services about 5,600, and construction about 1,300 to the central Ohio economy.

LaFayette said employment in the region is not as tight as it was in the late 1990s, when the unemployment rate was under 3 percent, but it will be tougher on companies to find good candidates to fill jobs.

“We are nowhere near there yet, but keep in mind that jobs are much more technically demanding than they were 20 years ago. We also have ongoing challenges with basic skills like effective communication, attention to the job, teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving,” he said. “ Anything we can do to give workers the right training, assess employer needs, and make sure that job openings and training opportunities are being communicated effectively to the labor force will be a good thing.”

Ben Ayers, a senior economist at Nationwide, believes the U.S. economy will continue to gain more than 200,000 jobs a month this year and that the U.S. jobless rate will fall to 4.7 percent, down from 5 percent now.

The economy should show modest improvement this year with growth of nearly 3 percent, helped by strong job gains, rising wages, auto sales and an improving housing market, Ayers said.

Ayers and LaFayette gave their forecasts during a program at the Metropolitan Club.

“Millennials are finally moving out of their parents’ basements, buying their own homes,” Ayers said.

Nationwide expects the Federal Reserve — which raised interest rates last month for the first time in nearly 10 years — to continue to raise interest rates in 2016, but the gradual increases shouldn’t put much of a damper on the economy for now.

“We’re not very fearful of an economic downturn in the next year or two,” Ayers said.

As he has done in earlier forecasts, LaFayette expressed concern about small-business formation and entrepreneurship in central Ohio.

Central Ohio ranks near the bottom of the largest 100 metros in the U.S. in the number of workers who are self-employed, the concentration of small businesses and the small-business birthrate, he said.

“I wish that the news were better,” he said. “We have gotten steadily worse in all small-business measures since 2007.”

Dispatch Reporter Tim Feran contributed to this story.

mawilliams@dispatch.com

@BizMarkWilliams

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